Archive for November 7th, 2009

Workers of H.D. Deve Gowda‘s Janata Dal (Secular), a party which like the Congress has taken grassroots politics to five-star spas, perform a mock funeral of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Belgaum on Saturday, in protest against the BJP’s “resort politics”.

Dozens of god-fearing legislators of God’s Own Party are shamlessly luxuriating in hotels, bars and resorts in various locations, counting their chickens before they are biriyani-ed, while the honourable chief minister, wedded to “development” and “governance” sheds tears for the TV cameras.

The Great Wall between India and China is not made of bricks and mortar; it is made of freedom and liberty. Any debate, any discussion, anywhere, on the superpowers-to-be is sealed, signed and delivered by the roaring presence of those essential ingredients in plentiful on our soil, and the utter lack of it in our great neighbour.

China notoriously detests dissent—and democracy.

It bars foreign media from freely moving inside its boundaries; Tibet is off-limits to them as is Tiananmen Square. BBC was famously taken off Rupert Murdoch‘s Star Network at the behest of the comrades. Google and Yahoo effortlessly dance to the tunes of the Chinese dictators. Chinese citizens routinely can’t log into YouTube, Facebook and other media. And so on.

But has difference between “us” and “them” been erased by the Congress-led UPA government?

In barring foreign journalists from going to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh to report the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama‘s week-long visit to the northeastern State which China off and on claims as its own, has the Manmohan Singh government thumbed its nose at India’s great democratic traditions?

Has India missed a trick in showing its inviolable sovereignty before a global audience? In behaving much like China would, has the Congress-led regime obliterated the difference between democracy and dictatorship? Or was the government right given the war-mongering that has recently been on display?